


Compass Point

by Riverdaughter



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Idealism, Living legends, The Honor of Steve Rogers, The Price of Courage, The idea and the reality, captain's orders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-21
Updated: 2017-03-21
Packaged: 2018-10-08 15:51:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10390296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Riverdaughter/pseuds/Riverdaughter
Summary: He was an ordinary boy with an extraordinary will, his alter ego was propaganda. Somewhere along the line he became an ideal.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Admittedly this is less of a story and more of a ramble about the nature of heroism and honor and idealism. But every time I remember that Steve woke up to Coulson and people like him, good people who tried to be like him, I feel the need to point out how hard that has to be.
> 
> Tony has a hard time getting people to like him for himself, Steve has people trying to imitate his ideal and I think that must be harder.

"King Alfred is not a legend in the sense that King Arthur may be a legend;  
that is, in the sense that he may possibly be a lie.  
But King Alfred is a legend in this broader and more human sense,  
that the legends are the most important things about him."  
-GK Chesterton

\--------------------------

Seventy years ago a legend was born. He was propaganda, pure and simple. A cardboard hoax to dreg money out of the general populace. The money was for a good cause but the man who made Captain America was a self-satisfied and greedy senator. The man who was Captain America was out of place and lost in the gaudy world around him.

Within a year of its birth the legend changed as legends (especially fabricated ones) often do. From the shell of a shallow mockery of patriotism emerged a flesh-and-blood hero. Born not of tax-collecting and popularity but of love and courage.

For two short years that love and courage became a symbol of what was right in world gone wrong. The man behind the legend was not perfect or invincible but he was good and he was a brilliant leader. His men loved him and even his enemies respected him. And then in the frigid embrace of a Northern Ocean and the twisted wreckage of futuristic plane, the man died.

The legend became immortal.

And a man became an ideal. Heroes are real. Courageous, kind, compassionate and humble, they stand behind us in grocery lines and drive past us on the street. Most are not recognized by any but those who know them.

Sometimes they are remembered. Because our lives are meaningless unless we can remember to be brave or strong or compassionate. Without that we just exist.

Man was meant to live.

Still people are faulty, it is hard to be good one plodding day after another. It is hard to remember that being brave gives no more than a split lip as its reward, that being kind is often met with betrayal. Ideals are so much more, they don't falter or waver. They are solid monuments to what is right.

Legends are steady stone that we can look upon and gather strength from. The dead cannot change their lives and disappoint us.

But sometimes they do. A man who was born out poverty and acquired courage, a propaganda piece that went off book, legend born in fire and immortalized in ice slipped the ice and came back to the waking world.

It is a hard thing to be an ideal in a world not your own. And it is an even greater burden to lead once again, to take responsibility for every unguarded word and reckless action. To captain a team of broken, dangerous heroes; the alien, the assassin, the spy, the monster and the machine. To live up to the weight of the world with grace and honor. That perhaps takes the greatest courage of all.

Captain America was a legend, Steve Rogers was a courageous man.


End file.
